I originally started researching and writing about the Cap Advantage Recapture Penalty (CARP) in relation to Shea Weber trade rumors last summer. It was pretty shortly thereafter that I started bandying about the phrase “Shea Weber is untradeable.” The liability of the potential CARP looming over a small market franchise like Nashville would be too great, especially considering the significant likelihood that Weber will decide not to play until he’s 41. But it happened and now I’m wrong about that. (Well, not about the CARP stuff so read on…)

(Just a quick note, my first, second, and third posts on this topic can be found at the links provided. I highly suggest giving them a read if you need some background info on what the CARP is and how it works.)

However, the exciting thing is that now everyone is talking about the CARP and want to learn more about it. I still cling to my viewpoint that the NHL has done no wrong in creating this cap mechanism. The Predators (a) chose to match the offer sheet, (b) were a party to the creation of the current CBA including the creation of the CARP, (c) chose not to buy him out with their compliance buyouts, and (d) chose to trade him with $24.5m of cap advantage sitting on their books. They made multiple conscious decisions to not limit their liability to this penalty. But, I can’t ignore the fact that others are right about how the NHL will not let a small market team, especially one that is such a major success story in their push to hockey-fy the South, be crippled with a penalty that could easily set the franchise back 5-7 years. Thirty other owner groups / GMs might say “tough nuggets” to them, but Bettman will certainly do what it takes to maintain 31 strong teams and markets in the league.

For at least the last two years, the idea has been floated around that the New York Rangers play two different games: one when Lundqvist is in the net and one when he isn’t. That idea goes on to posit that the New York Rangers who show up when Lundqvist is off the ice is a much better team. Those Rangers create more offense knowing that they can’t just grind out low scoring, one goal games, and they play a tighter defensive game knowing that the King can’t just bail them out when they misstep. Overall, they play a better game of hockey without their safety net.

In this article I intend to begin looking into the notion that a team plays differently depending on who the goalie in net is. I will do so by examining something less directly tied to the goalie position. I will be looking at the GF60 and CF60 rates of three separate teams split based on whether their franchise goalie is in the net or not.

The Narrative Behind it All

This idea isn’t without some cursory evidence. The Rangers were without Lundqvist for a sizable stretch in the 2014-15 season. A puck to the neck caused Hank to miss all of the Rangers’ games between Feb. 4th and March 26th, which was a 26-game stretch. Cam Talbot went on to shoulder much of the weight as the interim starter and ultimately he put up a great 0.926 performance. However, an early story line was the unexpected goal support from the Rangers for Talbot. From Feb. 10th to Feb. 22nd, the Rangers logged 33 goals in 7 games. And while they came back to earth shortly thereafter, the goal support still seemed to be there more for their goaltenders who aren’t named Hank. Talbot and MacKenzie stood in net for 38 games where the Rangers put up 3.04 GF60. Lundqvist received the slightly lower goal support of 2.89 GF60 over the course of 46 appearances. That came out to an extra 5.2% goals for Talbot and MacKenzie, which is an extra goal every 7 or so games.

Less Narrative, More Data and Graphs

I began by pulling 5v5 TOI, GF, and CF data for the New York Rangers’ goalies’ individual seasons from 2010-16, excluding 2012-13 (because the sample size is small for the lockout year). The data for guys besides Lundqvist were merged into a composite for each year.

The differences between the totals over these five seasons ended up being much larger than I expected. The Rangers scored an extra 0.23 GF60 in 5v5 play and generated 2.4 CF60 extra in 5v5 play when Lundqvist was on the bench or otherwise not playing. And in fact, the GF60 and CF60 data on a year-by-year basis was higher for the backups in 4 of the 5 seasons. The 5-year TOI totals were 16,202 min with Lundqvist and 5,758 min without. On a year-to-year basis, the TOI ranged from 2,225 to 3,088 min with Lundqvist and 743 to 1,785 min without. So the samples are decent in size.

Now, I do think this is compelling evidence that for some reason the Rangers are generally performing slightly better without Lundqvist in net. However, it is not possible to discern a reason from this data. Perhaps the players actually are more motivated to generate offense because they do not have their safety net. Perhaps the team’s coaches have made measurable changes to their personnel choices, such as decisions that are meant to try and keep the puck in the attacking zone. Perhaps the goalies themselves have significant contributions to the production, such as through stick handling.

To try and learn more about this apparent phenomenon, I investigated whether this situation has arisen on other teams. I chose to look at Nashville with Pekka Rinne and Chicago with Corey Crawford. Nashville, I thought, would provide a close parallel to the Rangers as both teams has generally been centered on an elite workhouse goaltender with a below average offensive team to support him. Chicago was to provide a stark contrast where I felt that Crawford was only depended upon to consistently deliver acceptable results and was infrequently leaned on to steal games. The Blackhawks tend to depend more on their offensive capabilities than the Rangers or Predators do, meaning that goaltending need not be as prized in Chicago.

The results were quite contrary to my expectations. The Predators, who seemingly would need to emphasize offense more without their star goaltender in net instead have mostly faltered in Rinne’s absence. Chicago, on the other hand, ramped up their production when they didn’t have their starter in net. It seems that the Blackhawks seek to capitalize more on their scoring opportunities to help support their backups.

Below is another look at the data. These graphs give direct year-by-year comparisons of the data for all three franchises with and without their starting goalie:

The GF60 data seems really noteworthy. For all three teams, 4 of the 5 dots fall on one side of the line. In the case of the Rangers and Blackhawks, they fall above the line, where offense is up when the starter is out. The Predators see a dip in production on all but one year when Rinne is off the ice.

The CF60 data mirrors the trend for the Rangers and Predators. However, the Blackhawks see their CF60 drop in 3 of the 5 years without Crawford in the net. This is starkly different than what was seen in the GF60 data.

Closing Statements

I intend to investigate this idea further with other teams that have had a consistent starter across the past six-year period (e.g., Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Dallas, etc). I will avoid teams that have significantly switched their starters in that period to try and avoid adding yet another set of variables into this analysis. Even someone like Lehtonen will be pushing it as he has effectively gone from being the #1 goalie in Dallas to a 1A/1B goalie this past year.

I know the Rangers better than I do any other team in the league so they would be the best team for me to dig deeper on this matter. I have a suspicion that personnel choices by the coaches may be a significant driver of what was observed for the Rangers. However, failing that I can also look into “puck luck” in those games. It is possible that what we’re seeing is just an aberration by pure chance.

Ultimately I think something like this could be an important part of understanding how a major roster change could affect a team in indirect ways. There could be an argument made that moving Lundqvist for a slightly above goalie could be a better change than would be expected than just by the GA60 and salary cap impacts. There is evidence that that a slight GF60 bump could occur, which would in part mask a rise in GA60.

Thanks to the 2015-16 Diving/Embellishment List on Scouting the Refs and the easily accessible data on Corsica, I made a quick graph of how 5v5 player penalty rates break down depending on whether the player had either 0, 1, 2, or 3 diving/embellishment calls in 2015-16 or had been fined by the league for the same offenses.

While the history of the Penguins and Rangers is not enough for them to consider each other rivals, they certainly have shared some heated events and interesting connections in the past. In this article, I will cover some of the noteworthy events and players these two teams have shared over the last 49 years in anticipation of their third playoff series in three years.

Past Incidents

David Shaw slashes Mario Lemieux in the throat.

The first major incident between the two teams happened on October 30, 1988. David Shaw of the Rangers made a two-handed slash across Mario Lemieux’s neck. Lemieux immediately went down and remained down for a few minutes. Pat Quinn of the Penguins went right after Shaw, brandishing his stick as a weapon. Quinn speared Shaw before the two ended up grappling and quickly went down to the ice.The entire Penguins bench got as close to Shaw as they could without jumping the boards as Shaw was escorted by them to the locker room.

The third period of that game would tally 282 PIMs and 9 game misconducts between the two teams as two separate brawls erupted in the last 5 minutes of play. Shaw would later received a 12-game suspension for his slash, which was the 3rd-longest suspension in league history at the time.

Adam Graves breaks Mario Lemieux’s hand with a slash.

In Game 2 of the 1992 Patrick Division Final, Adam Graves delivered a heel-first two-handed slash onto Lemieux’s left hand. Graves was only given a minor in game, but was hit with a 4-game suspension afterwards by the league. Those four games would be all it took for the Penguins to win the series 4-2. Lemieux was out of the line up for two weeks before returning in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Final against the Boston Bruins. Lemieux would score 8 points in the last three games of that series sweep. Lemieux would tally an additional 7 points in the Pens’ sweep of the Chicago Blackhawks for their second consecutive Stanley Cup.

Lemieux, when asked about the play some days later, commented that he thought the Rangers coach, Roger Neilson, had sent someone after him to hurt him intentionally. Lemieux said there was no question in his mind about that.

Lundqvist vs Crosby

The most notable aspect of the Rangers-Penguins match-up as of late has been the ongoing feud between Henrik Lundqvist and Sidney Crosby. While the two superstars seem to have a lot of respect for what the other has accomplished, they have a seething dislike for each other, which has culminated in a few unusual outbursts through the years. Most notably, there is the March 4, 2010, incident where Lundqvist called Crosby out for a suspected dive and a May 11, 2014, incident in which Lundqvist doused Crosby with water during a scrum.

Tortorella fined for comments about the Penguins

During a playoff game on April 5, 2012, Derek Stepan received a knee-to-knee hit by Brooks Orpik. In the post-game interview, Tortorella ripped hard into the Penguins organization and earned himself a $20,000 fine from the league. Crosby’s response was rather cool-headed with a touch of frustration.

Regular Season Match-Ups History

The Penguins entered the league in the 1967 Expansion and first faced the Rangers on October 22, 1967. They lost 6-4, which was a respectable loss for them against an Original 6 team that year. They would manage to tie the Rangers 2-2 in their third match-up on February 10, 1968. It wouldn’t be until their 8th meeting on February 5, 1969, that the Penguins would first overcome the Rangers.

The Penguins struggled against the Rangers for years after entering the league. By the end of 1974, the historic match-up between these two teams favored the Rangers with 29 wins, 5 losses, and 7 ties. But the tide would change from then on. The Penguins regrouped to find three victories and only one loss to the Rangers in 1975 and they would continue that trend for years to come. Between the start of 1975 and 1981, the Penguins found 15 victories, 9 losses, and 5 ties.

While the Rangers found some periods of resurgence against the Penguin, their winning percentage would gradually slip over the decades. Today, the Rangers sit ahead of the Penguins with 120 wins, 32 ties, and 114 losses. (Quick note: I counted shootouts as ties.) At their height in 1989, the Rangers had 24 more wins than losses against the Penguins. Today they sit only 6 regular season victories ahead of their rival.

More Importantly: Playoff Match-Ups History

It was not until the 1981-82 season that the Rangers and Penguins were placed in the same conference (and division). Prior to that, the only opportunity for these two teams to meet in the playoffs was in the Stanley Cup Final and that simply did not happen. However, even then it took until 1989 for these two teams to find each other in the playoffs. By then, the Penguins were led by three 100-point scorers (most notably, Lemieux with 199 pts) while the Rangers’ best talent was a budding Brian Leetch who captured the Calder with 71 pts in 68 games played. Unsurprisingly, the Penguins swept the Rangers in the first round.

The Penguins would win additional series against the Rangers in 1992 (where they went on to win the Stanley Cup), 1996, and 2008. However, the Rangers have reversed that trend with a 4-3 series win in 2014 and a 4-1 series win in 2015.

Notable Shared Players Throughout the Years

This year’s rosters will include five players who are playing against their former squad. The players and their stats for when they played for their upcoming opponent are as follows:

Interesting note: The Rangers traded Pascal Dupuis on February 27, 2007, to the Atlanta Thrashers along with their 3rd round pick in 2007. That 3rd round pick was then included in a deal between the Thrashers and Penguins. The Penguins ultimately selected Robert Bortuzzo with that pick that originally belonged to the Rangers.

Jarogmir Jagr

The most prolific player to have spent time on both teams would have to be Jarogmir Jagr. Jagr is a historic figure in both franchises. He sits second in career games played, goals, assists, and points for the Penguins, behind only Mario Lemieux. He was a core piece of the Penguins team for 11 years, including the two Stanley Cup teams he played for in his teenage years. Jagr won five Art Ross trophies, two Pearson trophies, and one Hart trophy with the Penguins.

While Jagr was only a Ranger for four years and only won a Pearson trophy with them, he is remembered as one of their greatest players. He holds their single season records in goals and points. He elevated a team that was outside the playoff bubble into the post-season (even if only for a first round exit) in his four years with the Rangers.

The Rangers made a significant trade with the Penguins in 1995 to try and repeat their 1994 Stanley Cup run. The Rangers gave up Sergei Zubov and Petr Nedved in exchange for Ulf Samuelsson and Luc Robitaille.

Ulf Samuelsson as a former Rangers enforcer and current Rangers assistant coach.

Zubov and Nedved would combine for 233 points in 218 games with the Penguins. Through a 1996 trade for Kevin Hatcher, Zubov found his home in Dallas. Hatcher was then traded from the Penguins to the Rangers on September 30, 1999 for Peter Popovic.

Nedved returned to the Rangers via another trade in 1998 that sent Alexei Kovalev to the Penguins with some additional, lesser pieces going each way. Kovalev would be part of an eight-person trade back to the Rangers by the Penguins in 2003.

Robitaille would produce 117 points in 146 games with the Rangers before a 1997 trade for former Penguins star Kevin Stevens sent Robitaille to Los Angeles for his second of three stays with the Kings.

Samuelsson would stick with the Rangers for four years and accumulate 60 points and 475 PIMs in 287 games. He was traded to Detroit in 1999 for a package of draft picks. Samuelsson is presently an assistant coach with the New York Rangers.

Andy Bathgate

Finally, Rangers legend and Hall of Famer Andy Bathgate played for both franchises. Bathgate was a long-time Ranger who was the Rangers’ leading scorer from 1956 to 1963. As a result, he sits at fourth in career goals, assists, and points for the Blueshirts.

By the time the 1967 Expansion Draft came, Bathgate was playing for the Red Wings, who decided to leave him unprotected. The Penguins claimed him in the 19th round as the 112th overall pick. Bathgate scored the first goal of the Penguins franchise and led the team in scoring for their inaugural year. The Penguins would play him for one more year before trading him to the Vancouver Blazers of the WHA.

In 2009, the Penguins selected his grandson Andy Bathgate, III, with the #151 overall pick in the 5th round of the entry draft. The younger Bathgate is currently playing for the Columbus Cottonmouths of the SPHL. Unfortunately, the elder Bathgate passed away on February 26, 2016, at the age of 83.

The challenge was pretty simple. The 30 teams were the 30 active NHL franchises. (So someone who played for the Atlanta Thrashers would count as a Winnipeg Jet, etc.) I made it a personal rule to exclude WHA seasons so that means WHA-era Edmonton Oilers, Quebec Nordiques, etc., were out of the picture. Only NHL seasons with those franchises would count.

And when it became apparent that the challenge could not be answered favorably, I decided to figure out the maximum number of teams I could cover with different sized combinations of players. The results are as follows:

One Player – 12 Teams

This was an easy one. Most hockey fans know that Mike Sillinger is the king of the suitcase. Over his 17 season NHL career he played 1,049 games spread across 12 different teams. He was involved in 10 separate trades. He never spent more than 4 seasons with a single team (Detroit – although he only played 3 games in his inaugural season) and maxed out at 155 games with a single team (Columbus).

The next closest players have all played for 10 teams: JJ Daigneault, Jim Dowd, Olli Jokinen, Michel Petit, and Mathieu Schneider.

Two Players – 19 Teams

There are four such pairs of players in NHL history who have played for 19 different franchises between them. And all of these pairs share Mike Sillinger in common. His companions here are Jim Dowd, Bryan Marchment, Dominic Moore, and Lee Stempniak.

So the futures for Moore and Stempniak could see them moving their respective pair up to top spot in this category if they move on to the right team next year. Stempniak’s resurgence with the Devils and continued success with the Bruins should help him land a contract next year (at the tender age of 34). Moore, despite being 36 next year, could possibly find a new home. He still has a good reputation as a dependable fourth line center in this league.

Three Players – 25 Teams

Full size – The data table for players who played for 9+ NHL teams. (Carl Voss played for four teams that are now defunct.)

So the original challenge: 30 teams among 3 players. Can’t even get close. We top out at 25 teams in three separate trios. Even more shocking: The first one listed does not contain Mike Sillinger! Instead, they all share Grant Ledyard. Ledyard played 18 seasons in the league spread among 10 different teams. He did play five years each with Dallas and Buffalo in the middle of his career, but the bookends of his time in the league involved a lot of roaming. The trios were:

JJ Daigneult, Grant Ledyard, Bryan Marchment

Jim Dowd, Grant Ledyard, Mike Sillinger

Grant Ledyard, Bryan Marchment, Mike Sillinger

Ledyard probably ended up in all three lists because of the teams he played for. Among the 24 players who played for 9+ teams, it was most difficult to find players for Columbus (only 1 player), Buffalo (2 players), and Washington (3 players). Sillinger was great because he had played for Columbus, but a lot of his other destinations were places that had had 8+ other players play there. As a result, he was prone to “overlapping.” Ledyard played with Buffalo and Washington and played mostly for teams with 6 or less other “overlappers.”

Four Players – 29 Teams

This outcome totally sucks. With Carter Anson, Dominic Moore, Mike Sillinger, and Jarrod Skalde, I maxed out at only 29 teams! Why are you doing this to me Colorado? Fortunately Dominic Moore is still active so there is that teeny, tiny chance that this gets fixed next year, but I doubt it.

Calculating this with four players required me to move towards a programming solution. I did find a 25-team trio running through combinations in Excel, but I was not able to exhaust my search that way. And then I found a source that let me expand my pool to players with 8+ teams on their resumes, which put this all out of the reach of handwork.

I had a 54 player pool, which meant I would have to run through 316,251 different combinations. So I wrote a script in python to do it for me and keep track of the results. The frequency of the results can be found in the chart to the right. The data seems to be normally distributed with a mean of approximately 21.5. (Or maybe it’s more like a binomial distribution? I’m bad at stats so please correct me.) The range of the data is from 14 to 29.

Five Players – 30 Teams

As can be deduced from the previous section, you can easily find five players who, between them, have played on all 30 active franchises. There are literally hundreds of combinations stemming off the Anson + Moore + Sillinger + Skalde quartet above. And I would not be surprised to know there are hundreds or even thousands more that can be formed with any of the 54 quartets that cover 28 teams, the 509 quartets that cover 27 teams, etc.

Disclaimer

So it’s worth noting that the player pool I worked with only included those who had played for 8 or more NHL teams in their career. In the 54 player pool I used in my programmatic approach, I removed players with less than 8 teams due to defunct teams (e.g., Carl Voss) or from “doubled up” teams due to relocations (e.g., Hartford moving to Carolina).

I can confidently stand by my one player result for obvious reasons. My two player result cannot be beaten by a player with 7 or less teams to their credit, but it could possibly be tied. So both of those results as a maximum number will stand.

But I cannot rule out the possibility of there being higher results for three or four person combinations. A 7-team player and any of the four pairs that cover 19-teams could possibly form a 26-team trio. Similarly, Sillinger and two 7-team players could also reach 26. Similarly for quartets, there are a number of scenarios in which including 7-, 6-, or even 5-team players could lead to covering all 30 teams. And considering how much the player pool grows when going down as far as 5-teams, it becomes slightly plausible that a 30-team quartet does indeed exist.

So overall, I have an interest in adding 7-team player data to my set to determine what effect it might have on the results. I don’t see it being a challenge programmatically; the challenge seems to be finding an easy enough data source to work with. However, if I need to dive down into 6-team and 5-team data sets I might start encountering some challenges with my limited programming knowledge.Nonetheless, if any of you know where I might be able to come across helpful data sets, please let me know.

The collective bargaining agreement (CBA) agreed to by the NHL and NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) in 2013 describes how a player can be placed on the LTIR, how this status effects his team’s cap situation, and what can be done with the player after receiving this status. In this post, I will describe how the LTIR status is granted, how it interacts with the salary cap, and provide an example of it being used in the league.

How does a player get placed on the LTIR?

The LTIR is specifically defined in Article 50.10(d) in the 2013 CBA. A player is eligible to be placed on the LTIR if the player has been determined to be unfit to play by the team’s physician for a minimum of 24 days and 10 regular season games. In the league believes that a player is being placed on the LTIR in bad faith, the league can issue a challenge. In this situation (which to my knowledge has not yet happened), the NHL and the NHLPA would select a neutral physician to evaluate the player and make a ruling.

The form needed to put a player on the IR.

What is described above is effectively a special version of the injured reserve (IR), which only requires an expectation that the player will be out for 7 days. Another key difference between the two is that the IR can be triggered retroactively and only creates a maximum roster size exception. The LTIR cannot be deemed retroactively and it can create exceptions to both the maximum roster size and the salary cap ceiling. Both statuses for a player can be designated using the form found as Exhibit 28 in the CBA, which is shown off to the side. A team would simply need to fill out this form and submit it to the NHL Central Registry and NHLPA.

Once the NHL Central Registry has approved the LTIR status, the team is allowed to add a replacement player or players to its roster.

How does the LTIR effect the salary cap?

The trickiest thing about the LTIR is determining how it effects the salary cap for a team. Article 50.10(d) in the CBA actually provides eight separate examples to demonstrate the “Bona-Fide Long-Term Injury/Illness Exception to the Upper Limit [of the Salary Cap].” Interestingly enough, the LTIR exception and the performance bonus cushion (another post for another day) create the only two exceptions to the salary cap ceiling during the regular season.

Perhaps the biggest misconception about the LTIR is that the player’s cap hit does not get removed from the team’s payroll. In fact, what happens is that the team is allowed to exceed the designated salary cap ceiling by as much as the cap hit of the contract for the player entering the LTIR. The value of the allowed overage is determined on the day that the player is moved to the LTIR. That player on the LTIR both continues to count towards the cap and continues to receive his salary. Article 50.10(d)(ii) specifically states

“The Player Salary and Bonuses of the Player that has been deemed unfit-to-play shall continue to be counted toward the Club’s Averaged Club Salary [….]”

The next Article, 50.10(d)(iii), states that

“The total replacement Player Salary and Bonuses for a Player or Players that have replaced an unfit-to-play Player may not in the aggregate exceed the amount of the Player Salary and Bonuses of the unfit-to-play Player who the Club is replacing[.]”

Finally, Article 50.10(d)(iv) states that

“[….] A Club may then exceed the [salary cap ceiling] due to the addition of replacement Player Salary and Bonuses of Players who have replaced an unfit-to-play Player, provided, however, that when the unfit-to-play Player is once again fit to play [including any time spent on a conditioning loan], the Club shall be required to once again reduce its Averaged Club Salary to a level at or below the [salary cap ceiling] prior to the Player being able to rejoin the Club [….]”

[emphasis in the original]

How has the LTIR been used in the league?

Thanks to Cap Friendly, I have found a resource that makes it a lot easier to show how the LTIR has been used this year by the Toronto Maple Leafs. They have engaged in some really interesting work with regard to cap and asset management through the use of a significant number of tools, including the LTIR. Below you can see a timeline of Nathan Horton’s status with the team over the course of the season. Most notably, he was moved from the Injured Reserve to the Long-Term Injured Reserve on October 27, 2015.

Now there had been little question from before the season that Nathan Horton was not planning to make any return to the ice. Unfortunately, he likely has career-ending medical issues, but he likely will not be retiring. It is neither in his interest (since he will continue to be paid on the LTIR) or in the interest of the Maple Leafs (for the reasons to come below) for Horton to retire at this time.

Thus the question should be asked why the Maple Leafs did not place Nathan Horton on the LTIR at the start of the season. That can illustrated with the graph below:

The black line represents the salary cap ceiling for the Maple Leafs. The blue line is their daily cap hit and the green line is a projected cap hit for the team at the end of the year. A team’s final salary cap number at the end of the year is actually the average of all their daily cap hits. The projected cap hit is that running average assuming that the current day’s cap hit were to be maintained through the end of the season.

Under normal cases, neither the blue nor the green lines are permitted to go over the black line at any single point during the season. So a team cannot operate at 150% of the salary cap ceiling for half the year and 50% of it the rest of the year to even out at 100%. No, teams must remain below the salary cap ceiling at all times. Unless they have one of two exceptions: an LTIR exception or a performance bonus cushion exception.

As mentioned above, the Maple Leafs can receive a salary cap ceiling exception equal to the overage created by the Horton contract after putting replacement players on their roster (whose total contract values cannot be greater than that of Horton’s contract), which occurs immediately after Horton is placed on the LTIR. At the start of the season, the Maple Leafs were operating at a projected $70.48m cap hit. If they had placed Horton on the LTIR at that point and fully replaced him, they could have created a maximum allowed overage of $4.38m. Instead, the Maple Leafs waited. Then on October 27, 2015, they called up Casey Bailey from the AHL (at a time when they had three players on the regular IR and needed a call-up), which put an additional $0.91m against the cap. This put the Leafs’ projected cap hit only $93,306 beneath the salary cap season. So they placed Horton on the LTIR at that point, granting them an allowed overage of up to $5,206,694 for as long as Horton is on the LTIR. (Note: Horton’s contract lasts through the 2019-20 season.) Thus, the Maple Leafs effectively have a salary cap ceiling of $76.6m while almost every other team can only spend up to $71.4m this year. (Note: Casey Bailey was back in the AHL after only two days up with the Maple Leafs. He arguably was only called up for this LTIR move.)

And so it can be seen that the Maple Leafs have used this allowed overage four separate times this year:

On October 29, 2015, they returned Casey Bailey to the minors, called Byron Froese up to the NHL, and signed Richard Clune. Overall, those moves put the Leafs at $71.5m, just slightly over the normal salary cap ceiling. This only lasted for a single day.

From December 30, 2015, to January 10, 2016, the Maple Leafs were at $71.7m in salary after an emergency call up of Mark Arcobello and Antoine Bibeau. (Both were sent back to the minors on January 3, 2015, for some reason but promptly returned to the NHL on the next day.)

From February 8, 2016, to February 22, 2016, the Maple Leafs were well above the normal $71.4m salary cap ceiling. One of the main factors was the trade that sent Phaneuf out of town (along with four other players in the AHL) in exchange for four Senators players. The exchange ultimately added $1.8m to the Maple Leafs’s salary cap. Around that same time frame, Tyler Bozak, Joffrey Lupul, and Jared Cowen (from the aforementioned trade) were all placed on the IR and required roster replacements. The Leafs ultimately carried a maximum salary cap of $75.9m on February 13, 2016. This used up $4.5m of the LTIR exception. Had Horton been placed on the LTIR at the start of the season, these roster moves could not have been done this way.

Not pictured above (because I made the image before all roster transactions were completed) is the Maple Leafs ending February 29, 2016, with about $440k above the normal cap ceiling. This is mainly related to them calling up a large number of their minor league prospects including Kasperi Kapenen and William Nylander.

Finally, it should be mentioned that sometimes the contract of a player on the LTIR can itself become a good asset. We saw that happen this past summer when Marc Savard was involved in a trade that sent him from the Boston Bruins to the Florida Panthers. The thing is: Savard has not played a single game since 2010-11, when he received a career ending concussion. So he had spent his entire time in Boston after his injury on the LTIR, which makes cap management a bit more complicated for the reasons described in detail above. However, Florida found his contract attractive as a cash-strapped team because it added $4.0m to their cap while only costing them $575k in real money each year. This helped Florida reach the salary cap floor. It was a move beneficial for both sides because now Boston has that $4.0m unlocked without having to do tricky movement of their assets.

In today’s NHL the idea of a player-coach is completely far-fetched. Both sides of the bench have become highly specialized and have demanding such responsibilities that you rarely find the player who can “do it all” on the ice and likewise for coaches in the locker room. In fact, we’re at a point where each team might have a head coach, two or more assistant coaches, a goaltending coach, and a support staff (such as video coaches and scouts). Likewise, players are expected to not only train physically, but also practice, and learn systems for all sorts of situations. Between the enormous increase in coaching responsibilities as well as the commitment fo rplay on the ice in today’s highly structured game, it’s unlikely we’ll ever see a player-coach in the NHL again.

So let us take time to reminisce about some of the more noteworthy NHL player-coaches in history.

Newsy Lalonde, 1917-22

Despite playing much of his early career before the NHL was formed in 1917, Newsy Lalonde was one of the league’s first star players. He scored 125 goals in only 99 career games and would have been both the Art Ross Trophy and Rocket Richard Trophy winner in 1918-19 if those awards had existed. Lalonde was an early captain of the Montreal Canadiens and was on their first Stanley Cup winning team in 1916 (in the National Hockey Association). He coached the Habs for 88 games from 1917-22, which included an NHL Championship win in 1918 (but not a Stanley Cup as the Cup was not necessarily tied to the league until 1926). After this he played for the Western Canadian Hockey League before returning to the NHL to coach for the New York Americans in 1926-27. In November 1926 he substituted into the game for an injured player, marking his final game as a professional hockey player in any league. He would return to coaching in 1929 with the Ottawa Senators before returning to coach the Canadiens from 1932 to 1935. Lalonde finished with a 144-167-28 record as an NHL coach. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame as a player in 1950.

Lester Patrick, 1928

Known as one of the league’s most influential coaches of all time (he introduced the blue line, forward pass, and the playoff system to the NHL to list just a few of his laurels), Lester Patrick only played a single game in the NHL and he did so as a player-coach. The 44-year old, who was in his first year as New York Rangers head coach, substituted himself into a Stanley Cup Final game after starting netminder Lorne Chabot suffered an eye injury from a high shot. Back then, teams did not have backup goaltenders. The opposing coach, Eddie Gerard of the Montreal Maroons, refused to allow either of the two professional goalies in the crowd (Alec Connell, star goalie for the Ottawa Senators, and minor-leaguer Hugh McCormick) substitute for the Rangers, leading Patrick to get in front of the net himself. Odie Cleghorn, who was coach of the Pittsburgh Pirates at the time, was in the stands and allowed to substitute for Patrick on the bench. Cleghorn told the Rangers to play a hard checking game the rest of the night, which kept the Maroons from getting shots close on net. Patrick made 18 saves on 19 shots, leading to the Rangers’ victory. The Rangers were able to get a league-approved replacement goalie for the remaining three games of the series, which they won to bring home the club’s first Stanley Cup championship. Patrick went on to win six Stanley Cups as a player, coach, and manager. He was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1947.

Cy Denneny, 1928-29

Player-coaches in the early NHL were somewhat common because coaching was not as complex as it is today and because teams had tighter budgets than they do now. Perhaps the most prolific player-coach of the early days was Hall of Famer Cy Denneny. Denneny was signed by the Boston Bruins in 1928 as a player, coach, and assistant manager. He led the team to their first Stanley Cup championship, his fifth and final one of his career, in 1929. Denneny was one of the most prolific goal scorers of the early NHL and at the time of his retirement in 1929 he held the career records in goals and points in the NHL. Denneny would round out his NHL career with two years as a referee from 1929-31 and a year as the coach and manager of the Ottawa Senators in 1932-33. After a last place finish with the Senators, Denneny moved on from hockey.

Frank Boucher, 1943-44

Frank Boucher became a player-coach for the New York Rangers in 1943-44 under very odd circumstances. At the time, Boucher had already been retired for six years. He is one of the Rangers’ greatest players of all-time as he had won two Stanley Cups as a player (1928, 1933) and another as a coach for the team (1940). However by 1943 the Rangers were the worst team of the league. The Rangers were actually so bad that Boucher came out of retirement to become a player-coach. At the age of 42, Boucher played 15 games and scored 14 points. The Rangers still finished with a 6-39-5 record, one of the worst in history by a non-expansion team. This was mostly due to their 6.20 GAA, which is the worst the league has ever seen. Boucher would continue coaching the basement dwelling Rangers through 1949, when he was let go after a 6-11-6 start on that season. He would return again in 1953-54, but after a 14-20-6 record his coaching days would come end. He was elected to the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1958.

Sid Abel, 1952-54

Hall of Famer Sid Abel is best known for his time in Detroit, both as a player (for 12 years) and as a coach (for another 12 years), but sandwiched between those spans was a two year stint as player-coach for the Chicago Black Hawks. Abel was part of the famed “Production Line” in Detroit with Ted Lindsay and Gordie Howe. In 1950 the three of them would take the 1-2-3 spots as the league’s leading scorers, the only time three teammates have done such in NHL history. After winning his third Stanley Cup in 1952, Detroit traded Abel to Chicago for cash. Abel coached the full 1952-53 and 1953-54 seasons for the Black Hawks while also skating in 42 out of 140 possible games. Abel was released by Chicago after only amassing 9 points and a 39-79-22 record. He would be picked up by the Red Wings in 1958 and spend the next 811 games on the bench for Detroit before finishing his coaching career with 13 games split between the St. Louis Blues and Kansas City Scouts.

Doug Harvey, 1961-62

With seven Norris Trophies, Doug Harvey is one of the most accomplished defensemen in the league’s history. He was a pivotal part of the 1950’s Canadiens team that appeared in ten consecutive Stanley Cup Finals (1951-1960), winning one in 1953 and five consecutive Cups from 1956-60. It was after missing the SCF in 1961 that Harvey was traded to the Rangers for tough guy Lou Fontinato. In Harvey’s first season with the Rangers, he served as player-coach, skating in 69 games and coaching for 70 of them. He led the team to a 26-32-12 record while winning his final Norris and finishing second in Hart voting behind Jacques Plante. Harvey did not like the pressure created by the position and so he stepped down as coach before the 1962-63 season. This was the last time the NHL saw a player-coach fill both responsibilities for a full season. He would play another 154 games in the NHL, but he never coached again. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1973.

Charlie Burns, 1969-70

Charlie Burns was the most recent player-coach the NHL has seen. On December 28th, 1969, he was named the head coach after Wren Blair was fired for leading the Minnesota North Stars to a 48-65-34 record in their first 2.5 years in team history. Burns coached the team for 44 games while also skating in 50 that year. Because I don’t have game logs to know when he skated, the best I can do is determine that he must have been a player-coach for a minimum of 18 games that season. Burns, a defensive-minded center, was known for his PK and checking abilities, would end up with 16 points as a player and a 10-22-12 record as a coach that year.

The 1969-70 season was not Burns’s first time as a player-coach. He served that role twice with the San Francisco Seals of the Western Hockey League (which is actually completely unrelated to the WHL we know today) in 1965-66 and again in 1966-67. His time as player-coach for the North Stars would neither end his playing or coaching career. He played with the North Stars through 1972-73. After spending a year in the AHL, Burns returned to the North Stars as a coach for a single year.

Honorable Mention: Arturs Irbe, 2014

While serving as the goalie coach for the Buffalo Sabres, Irbe was signed to a tryout contract on November 18th, 2014, to serve as an emergency backup goalie for the Sabres after Jhonas Enroth was injured in the first period while playing the San Jose Sharks. Irbe, who hadn’t played in an NHL game since April 4, 2004, suited up but did not play that night. Irbe had had a 13-year career that spanned 568 games. While his career 0.899 Sv% is terrible by today’s standards, he had a balance of seasons where his Sv% was above and below the league average. He was at times a rel workhorse, having lead the league with 70+ games started on three separate occasions. Had he taken to the ice in 2014, he would have become the first player-coach in 44 years and possibly the record holder for longest gap between seasons played (although that last part is speculation on my part).

Other Honorable Mentions: Todd McLellan and Joel Quennevile

McLellan only played 5 career NHL games and found himself overseas in the top Dutch hockey league by the age of 25. It was there with the team SIJ Utrecht that he served as a player-coach in 1992-93, sparking his interest for behind the bench. The next year he was a head coach for the North Battleford North Stars of the Saskatchewan Junior Hockey League. Over the next two decades McLellan worked his way up through the WHL and the AHL to become an assistant coach in Detroit, where he won the Stanley Cup in 2008. That next year marked the start of his first NHL head coaching assignment with the San Jose Sharks. McLellan is now the head coach of the Edmonton Oilers.

Quenneville served as an assistant coach to Marc Crawford in 1991 while he was still a player for the St. John’s Maple Leafs in the AHL. Quenneville had enjoyed an 803-game NHL career, but St. John’s general manager Cliff Fletcher was looking to transition him into a coaching role. Quenneville quickly worked his way up the ladder, joining the Quebec Nordiques in 1994-95 as an assistant coach and becoming a head coach of the St. Louis Blues in 1996-97. Now in his twentieth year as an NHL head coach, he has won more Stanley Cups (2010, 2013, and 2015 with Chicago) than he has had his teams miss the playoffs (just once: the 2006-07 Colorado Avalanche).

Brad Marchand, despite being one of the league’s biggest pests, is a highly skilled two-way winger who can play in all situations. He is both one of the best power play weapons for the Bruins and a key part of their penalty kill. So it is interesting to consider his prowess for getting calls and putting his team on the man advantage as well as for being called and sitting in the box while the Bruins play shorthanded. I plan to estimate the net “penalty effects” on the Bruins from Marchand’s penalty taking and drawing abilities.

Marchand and Penalties

Marchand has often been both the among the leading penalty takers and penalty drawers for the Bruins. His penalties taken (PF) numbers have been top three on the team in 2010-11 (3rd), 2013-14 (1st), 2014-15 (1st), and 2015-16 (t-1st). In the penalties drawn (PA) category, he has had top three finishes on the team in 2010-11 (1st), 2011-12 (1st), 2013-14 (2nd), 2014-15 (1st), and 2015-16 (1st). This has led to a large spread in how Marchand effects the amount of time that the Bruins special teams receive over the season: Continue reading “Penalty Effects: Brad Marchand and How He Effects the Bruins’ Special Teams Stats”→

Takeaways and giveaways are two turnover stats officially recorded by the NHL at every game. However much like other “real-time stats” like hits and blocked shots, there are issues to discuss before we can consider lending any credibility to the numbers.

Defining Takeaways and Giveaways

Perhaps the most concerning thing about takeaways and giveaways is that there is no definition for them from the NHL. The stats page does nothing to describe what either of these stats actually are. Worse yet there is no glossary or list of definitions on the entire NHL.com site that describes exactly what a takeaway or giveaway is. I asked Eric Hornick, the statistician for Islanders home broadcasts since 1982, if league had ever defined what giveaways and takeaways are:

@Chris_Beardy I’ve never seen [definitions] in writing anywhere. Same with any of the real time stats (except ice time). Lot of subjectivity.

Giveaways/Takeaways: Here are the league definitions: A giveaway occurs when a player’s own actions and decision making results in the loss of team possession of the puck.

A takeaway occurs when a defensive player causes a turnover and takes possession of the puck or when a defensive player makes a definitive effort to intercept a pass attempt and takes possession of the puck.

While I may sound like I am splitting hairs here, the subjective nature of these stats have led to unreliable record keeping. There have been many articles over the years describing “home rink bias” for turnovers, hits, blocked shots, and even more well-defined stats like shots on goal and assists. Any use of home stats for any player is going to introduce home rink bias into the statistics and make them rather suspicious. Below is a chart of home vs. away turnover stats for Colorado during the 2013-14 and 2014-15 seasons. The stats are for all situations and only for players with 80+ total games.

While the giveaway stats look fairly reasonable, it is exceedingly clear that Colorado’s home rink statistician is tracking takeaways in a way that deviates from the rest of the league’s statisticians. For this reason, I would advise the use of away stats only or the use of adjustment coefficients for home data.

(Note: While it is possible that the Avalanche’s statistician is recording takeaways in a way that is biased for the home team, we cannot say that for sure from this data alone. If his record of takeaways by Colorado’s opponents is similar, then the issue is instead a deviation of how this statistician defines takeaways relative to the rest of the league. That investigation would be another post for another day.)

Situational Bias

The turnover stats reported by the NHL are for all situations – even strength, power play, and shorthanded. In addition, these stats are reported as base counts, completely ignoring the influence of varying time on ice across players. I was actually inspired to look into this topic yesterday while reading the NHL Arbitrators blog yesterday on finding comparable players to Kucherov for estimating his next contract value. It was a great read and I really like the blog concept and approach. However, the author made use of turnover base counts from the NHL when making one of his comparisons:

For instance, over the last two [full seasons], O’Reilly had a takeaway-giveaway ratio of 181-59 while Stepan’s was 96-69.

In the course of my research, I found that this difference largely disappeared when using away stats and switching to rate-based statistics:

Player

Home GV / 60

Home TK / 60

Away GV / 60

Away TK / 60

Ryan O’Reilly

1.22

4.70

1.00

2.07

Derek Stepan

1.99

2.17

1.06

2.08

The two players are almost exactly identical when removing the home rink bias from each sample. The switch to rate-based statistics adjusts for the fact that O’Reilly had a higher average time on ice per game as well as the fact that Stepan was injured at the start of the 2014-15 season, causing him to play less games than O’Reilly. Below is a further breakdown of the away stats by situation for the two players:

Player

5v5 GV / 60

5v5 TK / 60

PK GV / 60

PK TK / 60

PP GV / 60

PP TK / 60

Derek Stepan

1.12

2.25

0.00

2.75

0.94

0.31

Ryan O’Reilly

1.03

2.19

0.55

3.84

1.51

1.21

Do note that the PK and PP samples are rather small (100 -200 mins) so they may not necessarily be close to what they would be over a longer stretch of time.

Ultimately, I think it was still fair for NHL Arbitrators to say that O’Reilly had more favorable turnover stats than Stepan, but I would argue that they were much closer than the base counts implied.

An Incomplete Picture

Giveaways and takeaways make implicit descriptions about possession during a game. A giveaway signals that the player had the puck before the event occurred while a takeaway signals that the player did not. From there we can ask if a team’s ability to possess the puck is having an impact on the player’s stats.

Returning to the O’Reilly vs. Stepan comparison from before we can see that there might be something to this. Despite being one of Colorado’s best possession players, O’Reilly’s away 5v5 score-adjusted Corsi for was 45.42% over the last two full seasons. Stepan on the other hand had a 50.52% Corsi for in the same situations. This 5.10 percentage point difference suggests that the Rangers had possession of the puck more often than the Avalanche did. This makes it more likely that Stepan was in situations where he could commit a giveaway than O’Reilly, while O’Reilly would have had more opportunities to commit a takeaway than Stepan.

Now, it should be noted that Corsi is a proxy for possession because all it actually measures are certain types of shot attempts. It does not quantify time of possession, zone entries and exits, pass attempts, etc. And this also does not quantify O’Reilly’s or Stepan’s actually roles and successes on the ice. It tells nothing of how much each skates with the puck on their stick, how their positioning is, etc. All of that could be another topic for another day (depending on how much data is out there for these sorts of things).

This bridges over into a criticism that Mishkin had back in his 2013 article:

You would figure a player with a high giveaway total is prone to making bad decisions while one with a lofty takeaway total is adept at reading plays. But the player’s “giveaway” total only highlights potential bad decisions. There’s no corresponding number for how many good decisions he makes with the puck. (At least in football, the quarterback offsets his interceptions with other figures, such as completion percentage, yardage and touchdowns).

Mishkin is right that we need to know a lot more to make use of these turnover statistics when comparing players. It just further enforces the need for more data to properly make use of these statistics. Perhaps the biggest indication that we need to re-evaluate the use of these statistics is the fact that 2015 Norris trophy winner Erik Karlsson led the league in giveaways in the last two full seasons combined. Behind him were PK Subban and Joe Thornton. While these three players “did the most bad things with the puck” over those two seasons, I highly suspect that some record of the “good things they did with the puck” would vindicate them. Unfortunately, no such data is tracked by the NHL.

In Conclusion

To wrap it up, it’s important to do the following when using turnover stats in player evaluation:

Either stick to away stats or find/calculate an adjustment coefficient for home statistics.

Use rate-based statistics, preferably ones based on time-on-ice.

Consider the situational usage of the players you’re using.Either use 5v5 stats or make a note of how PP and PK stats influence the players’ composite stats.

Think about how a player’s stats can be influenced by their style of play as well as that of the team around them.

Add a disclaimer about the shortfalls of turnover stats and use other metrics in your comparisons.

There’s something funny about Roberto Luongo. I’m not talking about his twitter or him reading poetry about Byfuglien, I’m talking about the potential cap advantage recapture penalty (CARP) attached to his contract:

Here are the cap penalties from Roberto Luongo’s contract for the Canucks if he retires early. Could be really ugly

Yes, if Roberto Luongo retires as a Panther in 2021 (at the ripe old age of 42), then the Panthers are not hit with any CARP while the Canucks will have a one-year penalty of $8.5m. Now the explanation will be quite complex, but it’s manageable:

The Original Contract and the Trade

Below is a table of the original Luongo contract from the Canucks signed in 2010 along with calculations of AAV, annual cap advantage, and net cap advantage: